The following references to and descriptions of prior proposals or products are not intended to be, and are not to be construed as, statements or admissions of common general knowledge in the art in Australia.
Typically, prior peg removing tools rely on leverage principles. They can be difficult to use, particularly in hard ground, and may be ineffective to extract the peg without considerable effort. Accordingly, conventional hammering (shock load) techniques have been employed in devices to break up the frictional forces binding a peg in the ground.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,792 (Burris) a bar stake puller using the sliding hammer principle is disclosed. The bar stake puller is a hand tool comprising a claw foot 1 having a standing bar 2 and a sliding bar 3 with a handle 10, wherein the standing bar and the sliding bar are adjacently engaged to each other whereby to slide relative to one another along parallel, non-coaxial axis. Because the standing and sliding bars are not coaxial, torque about the longitudinal axes of the standing bar 2 and the sliding bar 3 occurs during use (see column 2, lines 30 to 33). Moreover, because the sliding bar 2 makes up less than half of the total mass of the pulling tool, and being lightweight, it is ineffective in its application of the sliding hammer principle. Burris describes the likelihood of personal injury particularly to hands, fingers or flesh when using tools that involve the sliding hammer principle. Burris claims to remove this risk by reducing the mass of the moving part and providing for one-handed operation. Used properly, Burris' tool may not cause injury. However, the meeting of the two surfaces that create the impact function of this tool occur external to the body of the tool and are thus easily accessible to the operator's hands/body.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,424 (Gonterman et al) there is described a peg driver and extractor adapted for a peculiarly designed peg head (see FIG. 4). The Gonterman tool includes a reciprocating member 16 coaxially mounted on a tubular member 11. The reciprocating member 16 is presumably grasped by the operator and used as a sliding hammer when the tool 10 is engaged to a specifically designed peg. The momentum, and ultimately the shock load, is particularly restricted by the relatively low mass of the reciprocating member 16 as a proportion of the total mass of the tool. The use of the Gonterman tool is limited by the peg driving method which also makes use of slide hammer principles. This tool would probably require a second person to hold the tent peg steady during the first stages of the driving in process since the tool itself requires two hands to operate. Moreover, the strike plates 19 against which tubular member 16 impacts are exposed whereby the user may jam his fingers between member 16 and plate 19.
There is a need for a tool which overcomes the shortcomings of the above described prior art or at least provides a useful alternative thereto.